for me, year 1998 marked the transition to 3d era as 3d cards had matured at this point and all companies were focusing on boosting 3d(some had already been eliminated). this doesn't mean that demand for 2d has diminished but it was largely just a side product of improving 3d performance rather than dedicated effort, as all cards were using integrated ramdac and sd/sgram by then.
and the requirement is support for high resolutions with fast 2d performance. the only candidates i can think of are s3 968 and matrox millenium1/2, any other nominations?